


The Fall of Doc Silence

by PDV



Category: Doc Future - Fandom, Valdemar Series - Mercedes Lackey
Genre: Alternate Universe
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-10
Updated: 2021-02-22
Packaged: 2021-03-12 21:54:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29641230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PDV/pseuds/PDV
Summary: The smartest people in the world can still be very stupid sometimes.
Kudos: 3





	The Fall of Doc Silence

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [For with you I shall come home again](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23337403) by [Swimmer963](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Swimmer963/pseuds/Swimmer963). 
  * Inspired by [The Fall of Doc Future](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/765168) by W. Dow Rieder. 



> The setting and circumstances are from The Fall of Doc Future. The two people slotted into those roles are the two leaders of the Mage Wars, Urtho (Ethan Future) and Ma'ar (Antha - nee Samantha - Reinhart), as interpreted by Swimmer963 (i.e. as intelligent and non-cartoonish humans who made enormous mistakes and ended the world). I make no claim about whether these version of them will also make enormous mistakes that end the world, though it's certainly possible given their circumstances.

"That was extremely careless of me. I apologize for the necessity," Antha said, as she sipped from her stout.

"I guess, but it's not something you need to apologize for. If I hadn't been talking to you you wouldn't have had the problem at all," Flicker replied.

"No, don't blame yourself. I was distracted for other reasons, and I did want to talk with you. My fault that you needed to hurry that much."

"If you say so. You're sure you aren't hurt?"

"Enough bruises I won't forget it, but my ego is hurt much more. All my precautions and I almost got _hit by a bus_. Which would have been such a stupid way to die."

"There are smart ways?"

"Not really, though I did read about one fellow who managed to conceal his own death by disease and had his enemies still jumping at shadows twenty years after he was dead. Spiteful more than actually smart, but impressive."

Flicker hmmed noncomittally.

"There's something wrong, is there?"

"Well, there’s a whole bunch of stuff I want to talk to you about, and a favor I’d like to ask, but I know you’re really tired from the conference, and you’ve had a rough time with the flight mess and now you almost got killed, and did get shook up, and I don’t want to add to things." Flicker said agitatedly. She was looking every direction but at Antha.

"You saved my life. There are _probably_ favors you could ask I'd refuse, but none come to mind."

"You sure?"

"If there is anything I can help with, I will."

"Then help Doc. He needs it, and he’s been getting worse."

"Do you realize how difficult it will be to even get him to listen to the possibility that I might be able to help him? That's not a refusal."

"He doesn’t know how smart you are yet, and I can tell him more about you so he doesn’t think you’re a villain or something," Flicker said, "I wish you had been willing to meet him before this, I know you were worried about the independence thing, but there isn’t any harm in talking, right? He is probably going to think you’ve been hiding from him."

Antha's face went very still.

"Flicker, I _have been_. You telling him anything more than that you trust me and I have important things to talk to him about would be a mistake."

"Really? Why? Why either of those things?"

"I have to establish both credibility and trustworthiness, and that will be hard; he won't trust me if I'm not honest, and there are many things I'll have to be honest about he will be very skeptical of. Doc has rules, not as strict as V-man's, but strict enough, and I've broken _almost all of them_ at one time or another. I’m not sure I can do it, and I definitely can't do it without very carefully managing how I share things and in what order. He won't kill me, but he might only hold back because it would upset you."

"What!? Don't joke about that!"

"When do I joke about things like this? It's the honest truth. I'm _dangerous_ , to do what I do, and he doesn't know that yet. I need to be very careful about how quickly he learns it and mixed with what else about my background."

"He wouldn’t kill you over what you did at the conference! I know he-" Flicker suddenly looked down at the table. "I’m sorry, I wasn’t going to bring that up till later…"

"You were watching, I know. How much did you catch?"

"You’re going to be mad. And - and maybe I shouldn’t have done what I did, but I was worried that some government agencies might be after you because of your work, so I checked some things in Doc’s database, and they were. I scattered some monitor bugs around, and then when you went off with that blond agent guy after the conference was over I figured you were in trouble, so I came over."

"So, you saw the play-acting with Steve - his name is Steve - the sniper, probably the claymore. Anything more?"

"I dropped a bug - visual and audio - when you opened the door to the safehouse, but I didn't understand anything after that, so I just decided to watch and only intervene if you were about to get hurt."

"Good decision. I set up almost everything happening there, and most of it wasn't visible or spoken, there were four kinds of mind control I was using and the governments watching me were trying to use some others."

"You seemed like you were terrifying - Steve - but he was trying to stay calm and you were - having fun? Was that mind control?"

"Yes, long term conditioning and suggestion on Steve. The subtlest kind, and the one with no special talents needed. And yes, I was having fun. It's rare I actually get a dangerous challenge anymore, I've scared all the stupid targets into hiding. And I was giving Steve a very thorough crash course in mind control ethics. He asked, though it was a while ago and he didn't expect me to show off my expertise quite that much."

"And the aggressive sexual part? I was holding my breath when you asked and he said no, you were _scary_."

"Several reasons; I was setting up a cover story, making a point about consent, and some paranoia. And scaring him was fun, too."

"So, why? I understand that the people who died were trying to kill or kidnap you, but what was different about Steve that you went to all that effort to teach him, then let him go? Or do you still have him mind controlled?"

"No, he's going to be in charge of the US mind control research program in a couple years. They keep being incredibly unethical, and I'm tired of cleaning house every few years. He's going to keep them stuck to defense."

"And the Israeli telepath? Hearing her talk like you was creepy."

"I have a _very aggressive_ mental defense. The short answer is that she isn't me, but she's much closer to being me than she was yesterday. I usually pull back when someone tries to eat my mind, but she was much more tempting and there wasn't much else _there_ \- her handlers were _by far_ the most monstrous people involved yesterday. Except maybe me, V-man would probably say I was just as bad."

Flicker boggled.

"Doc might, too. I know he hates mind controllers, but I _am_ one, and he might not accept the ethical differences. That's the biggest obstacle for me helping him."

"About that... there's something else I need to warn you about. I did a Database query and there's something out there. It goes after mind controllers, telepaths and magicians and it's _really_ nasty. You need to be careful, cause they never seem to escape, they end up dead, insane, or just gone-"

"Flicker-"

"The only data was from secondary sources that happened to witness things, I think some may have been enslaved-"

"Flicker, stop."

"And it's going to come after you after that much attention- What?"

"I know all about that."

"Don’t you dare tell me not to worry! I think it’s some kind of old evil goddess that got brought back somehow, and I'll kill her if that's what it takes"

Antha's face was very blank again. "That's not the issue, Flicker. There is no goddess, no cult. It's just one woman."

"No way! They killed over two hundred people just with knives-"

"Three hundred ninety-two, and yes, I did. It's _all_ me. She Who Waits, Eater of Demons: it's all just my cover story."

"Um. Anyway, you wouldn’t be able to hide your connection to all that from Doc’s database. You’d have to have started hiding before you did anything else, and be as smart as Doc besides, so-"

"I did, I am, that was my second-highest personal priority from the minute I started augmenting. I did the same thing as Doc and it was _always_ my plan, from the beginning, to hide from him until I could approach him as an equal. Doc’s database is one of the main restrictions on what I can do. If you're going to kill me, hear me out first."

"I wouldn't kill you, you're my friend!"

"But you were ready to a minute ago. Look, the academic stuff you've seen is a sideline. Most of it I could never safely publish, and that's only becoming more of it as time goes on. The last twelve years, my main work has been hunting down evil mind controllers, telepaths and magicians and neutralizing them, fatally or not. I'm sick of it, but there isn’t really anyone else who can do it. I have perfect mental defenses and can catch them."

Antha took a deep drink from her beer.

"I'm a threat and a mind controller and Doc is on a hair trigger about both. He will start putting things together as soon as I tell him about the conference, and that will be the first thing he'll want to talk about."

"Are you really as smart as he is?", Flicker asked.

"Yes. He's faster than me and has some other advantage I haven't figured out, but I think we are about equal in raw intelligence. We are both near the limit for the human brain," Antha said.

"Why haven’t you ever told him? I know he’d want to talk to you about that."

"If he believed me. I'm very implausible - so is he, but everyone knows about him. Most people who try augmenting... Actually, wait. Promise me you won't try to steal, hack or decrypt my papers. I know you are thinking about it, and I’ve already taken precautions."

"Um," said Flicker, "Okay. I promise I won’t try for as long as you are alive."

"That's harder to tell than you might think. If I’m apparently dead, and someone contacts you who can duplicate my memories and mannerisms, it's actually still me." She paused for another sip, "So don’t go rushing to conclusions."

"Like the telepath who sounded like you?"

"That wasn't her, it was me. I hadn't given control back to her yet. That’s what happens when someone tries to take over my mind or read it."

"Yeah, but you can’t do that after you’re dead," Flicker looked suddenly worried, "Can you?"

"I can't _start_ after I'm dead, but I won't automatically stop, and I have a few copies stored, waiting for regular check-ins, and they'll wake up and look around if I miss too many in a row. I have to deliberately leave, and sometimes it’s hard. Yiskah, there, was _very_ hard. Because there isn't much of a person in there, not after what her handlers did to her from toddlerhood."

"And you think you might be as bad as that?"

"I have good reasons for the terrible things I've done, and I read their minds to check and they _really_ didn't. But if you just look at the _costs_ , not the benefits that the costs paid for? It's closer than Doc would like, that's for certain."

"Okay. If you don't want to go into detail-"

"I don't."

"-then something else. How can your mind do that?"

"When I augmented, I was concerned about mind control, so I set my mind up so it would be difficult. And I was terrified of dying, and was considering using the same tool for that. Then when I was your age, I had a bad scare, and made a panicked self-modification so it was _impossible_ to mind control me and I would take over anyone who tried. I'd already worked out how, because that was what I was considering as an immortality solution, but it went overboard. A copy of part of my mind will take over wherever it ends up, and I have to give it back."

"Must be nice not having to worry. I remember talking to Doc about threats once, and he told me one of the biggest personal threats he worried about was being mind controlled by whoever defeated some old villain named Brainwave using his amplifier helmet. He made sure I knew what it looked like, so I could vaporize it before slowing down if I ever saw it."

"I considered it, when I first realized he'd consider killing me if he found me. But it wouldn't have gotten me anything I actually wanted, beyond satisfying some momentary lust, and would have burned all my goodwill with V-man and most of the superhero community. And that was before I knew you, after that it would have been an even worse idea."

"Wait, you had the helmet? How did you get it?"

"I woke up wearing it after the first time someone tried to mind control me. It was rather disconcerting, as was being in a male body without warning. Brainwave was the first time I let my mind seed control someone and then _didn't_ give their mind back, he was dangerous and I was, honestly, still somewhat afraid."

"Do you still have it?"

"Yes. I’ve never actually used it, but destroying it outright seemed wasteful. Now I think I might give it to Doc as a gesture of goodwill."

"Yeah, that's a good idea. Did you say you had a thing for Doc? It's hard to imagine."

"He's the smartest man in the world and one of the most powerful, that's most of what I ever get interested in. But when I realized it was never going to work out, I trained myself out of it. With a little wistfulness, maybe."

"How do you know it wouldn't work out? One time Neodymium Man was teasing Doc about not having a girlfriend - he's kind of crude, but he’s a real good friend to Doc, and finally Doc said something like 'Fine. Find me a woman close to as smart as I am and vaguely the right age, I don’t even care about looks, and I’ll ask her out.' and that shut him up."

"Oh, 'close to as smart' I'd believe. But 'just as smart'? He categorizes women as 'inferior' and 'deadly threat' and I don't think he has a third category, not on a subconscious level. I'll have to finesse it hard to not start on the deadly threat side, because I think I could convince him but not fast enough to keep him from firing a laser battery through me first."

"Wow. You think he would do that?"

"I'm pretty sure he's done it before. I don't know the details, but when his last HQ got destroyed, the main damage was inflicted by a laser pointed directly through his own bedroom. So being hypersensitive to the intersection of threats and sex probably didn't come out of nowhere."

"Huh. Yeah, that would do it. Does that mean you aren’t willing to talk to him? I suppose you could use email…"

"No, I'll try it. We've discussed some of my papers briefly. But if he does vaporize me, chew him out for me, would you? I'll survive this body's destruction but it will be a terrifying experience if I have to."

"Um, okay. Oh, about the sex thing: my project's gone really well so far."

"You picked someone? Who?"

"Picked and approached, while you were prepping for the conference. Um. I was all eager to tell you, I don't know why I'm so embarrassed all of a sudden…"

"Normal physiological and emotional reaction, don't worry about it. So, are you satisfied with your control now, or are you still in progress? I know you’ve been waiting on that before even considering having a regular boyfriend."

"I think I have one already."

"You fell for your safety practice partner? I did warn you."

"You did... but right as we finished our agreed safety plan, he did something really sweet..."

"Well, you'll be very vulnerable to him emotionally, but I'm sure you can handle it. How far down your list did you have to go?"

"I really wanted my first choice, so I prepared carefully, and he said yes."

"Who was it? No, wait, you've been evading that."

"Yeah, he asked me not to say."

"Why? Oh," Stella covered her eyes with her hand, "Donner."

"Yes. I know you don't care much for him, but I _thought_ you'd be happy for me."

"I literally _can't_ be objective about Donner. I've tried, but it would be dangerous for me to try any more than I already have. I can't tell you why, either, it would get into augment details. I would have objected to you putting him on your list if I thought there was any chance in hell of him saying yes. How did you manage that?"

"I did a lot of research first to get ready, and then I used some of the techniques you taught me and that I read about in your papers to optimize my approach."

Antha looked incredulous, "My techniques?"

"Yeah, the trick of looking for deviations from standard body language - I studied some recordings of him first - and the one on small eye movements."

"That requires a high speed camera, and a computer for analysis, how did you-"

"My eyes, and my speed mind. And I've been doing stuff like that in my head for ages, V-man taught me to do that kind of detailed body language analysis - and how to project it myself. Your papers were just more thorough about using it for extrapolation and prediction rather than just assessment. I realized that having it all done by each conversation fork let me use a decision tree based on what I got, and that worked really well."

"That’s… quite impressive, Flicker. You’d better tell me the details..."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Flicker's details are as seen in canon's chapter 4, ["First Date"](https://docfuture.tumblr.com/post/32042711143/donner-first-date).


End file.
